Last month, Israel took significant steps to solve humanitarian problems in Africa, and we drew attention to the fact that this was completely ignored by the UK media. This month, the pattern has continued, this time regarding Israel’s burgeoning ties with India.

Raising living standards in India is one of the great social challenges of our time and, naturally, these issues have received much coverage in the UK press (see the links above, as well ashere, here, here.)

During his six-day trip, Netanyahu witnessed existing Israeli projects in India, and he and his delegation signed deals and announced new projects.

One area where Israel is very active is agricultural training. Netanyahu visited one of the Israeli Centres of Excellence, which provide know-how and training for Indian farmers. Israel is a world leader in drip-irrigation, water management, desalination and making the most of minimal resources, and these centres share this know-how with Indian farmers. Various states within India have in recent years announced large-scale projects based on the Israeli technologies and ideas shared. In a country in which 60% of its population work in agriculture, sharing Israeli farming techniques and technology make a vital contribution in raising Indian living standards. In his speech at the Gujarat Centre of Excellence, Netanyahu noted that Israel already has 20 such centres around India, and is continually opening more, with the number soon set to hit 30. ­

­Many Israeli companies were also represented in the Israeli delegation, and they signed a number of deals during the trip. Watergen, an innovative Israeli company that literally produces water from thin air, signed a deal with Tata, the giant Indian company, to bring this innovative technology to Indian communities. This will help combat the threat of drought, whichdestroys lives and communities. This was just one of numerous deals signed during the visit.

To India, and its Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Netanyahu’s trip was clearly a major affair. When Netanyahu arrived, Modi tweeted: “Welcome to India, my friend Prime Minister Netanyahu. Your visit is historic and special. This visit will strengthen the close ties between our countries.”

The welcome Netanyahu received was extraordinary. President Modi broke with protocol to greet Netanyahu personally at the airport, and thousands of citizens lined the streets of his home state of Gujarat, waving Israeli flags and welcoming the Israeli leader. Such a welcome has now been provided for three leaders – Mr Xi Jinping, President of China, Mr. Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, and now the Prime Minister of Israel.

It is surprising therefore that this visit received almost no coverage in the UK media at all. Solving humanitarian issues in India is something that is an important cause – but when Israel comes into the limelight, for its role in solving these issues, then suddenly the media falls quiet.

One reason for the silence may be that this trip runs against the narrative of Israel’s so-called “diplomatic isolation”. The picture that is often painted, of Israel as a side-lined, maligned country, is totally debunked when Israel’s Prime Minister is greeted with open arms by the Prime Minister of the second most populous country in the world. Streets lined with people waving Israeli flags is also a “shock to the system” – the media is more comfortable with photos of people burning Israeli flags, not waving them.

Netanyahu’s trip to India reveals two sides of Israel that do not receive enough media attention – Israel as a partner in solving the major humanitarian issues of the day, and Israel as a country that is quite popular in many parts of the world – facts which contradict the simplistic, one-sided narrative often presented by foreign journalists covering the region.

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Aron Whitehas a BSc in Politics and International Relations from the University of London (Lead College: LSE), and is a graduate of the Jewish Statesmanship Center in Jerusalem. His writings have been published at the Jerusalem Post, JNS, The Daily Caller and the Algemeiner.

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The main reason the “Israel is isolated” argument doesn’t work is straightforward: the proponents of this view are either part of the Western Left or beneficiaries of being that group’s pets (like Hezbollah is for Jeremy Corbyn) and since they see themselves as the sole driver of world events and their opponents as being uniquely evil and worthy of destruction, the fact that this group dislikes Israel (a documented fact that Israel is aware of and generally gives very little damn about) translates to them trying to hold it entirely true in the world. That’s a world that contains billions of influential individuals who in some measures A) hate the Left, B) ignore the Left, C) don’t give a damn about toeing any political line next to economic and strategic ones and D) do what is in their interests even if it causes problems in areas A-C. So if you erase reality from the world when it doesn’t fit with your hardline ideological views, of course the mostly-Left UK papers are going to say Israel is isolated; they just look and sound like brain-dead assholes when they do that. I’d also add that that it’s pretty absurd to bring India of all countries into argument considering New Dehli had almost no ties to Israel during the entire Cold War, but NOW close Indo-Israeli ties are part of Israel’s faux-isolation (along with similar situations for China and Russia). Such a stupid blind alley of obedience to Leftist bile-dogma, seriously.